The Screen Room, by JF

I was sitting in the extra board waiting room while a tune ran through my head … “The Tennessee Waltz”.  It was New Years Eve 1953.  The last several years  I had always attended a dance at the Legion hut on this night, but not  tonight.  Now I was sitting here, meeting the 4-12 shift at the “pulp mill”, trying to get work.  A friend of my father’s, Mr Crawford, walked in and told me to “come on.”  Years later, my father married Mr. Crawford’s widow after my mother died.  Well, it is a small town and getting smaller.

We walked to the back side of the mill and I followed him into “the screen room”.  He showed me what I was to do and took off.  I don’t think I ever saw him again, certainly not that night.

The screen room was located in a two-floor building near the woodyard.  The building smelled of pine, a very pleasant odor, and was warm with high humidity. The purpose was to separate good usable chips for the process although I had no idea that night what was going on.  There were conveyer belts going every which way and in the process there were pine chips and sawdust flying off the belts and landing on the floor, usually in piles.  My job was to shovel up the chips and sawdust and put them back on the belts.  It was an easy job and only lasted about a half an hour every hour.  The rest of the time was mine so to speak.  The noise was not too bad and best of all, I earned another $9.50 per shift (8 hours).

I figured out about the screens; there were several of them, each about as big as a small car.  The chips from somewhere were fed at the top of a vibrating screen that was on an angle of about 30 degrees.  The chips that fell through the top screen went onto another screen that had small openings where the good chips went on a different belt than did the too small chips.   Years later I found out that the too large chips were chipped again and sent back to the screens; the good chips were sent to the digesters and the too small chips and sawdust were burned to make steam…try writing that.  One thing I would say now is don’t get caught in a moving belt…it would be sundown!

Since I never saw another person in the screen room all night, I spent about half a shift looking out of a small window on the side of the building which overlooked a wet road and the side of a building housing a paper machine.  I thought of the song again: “I was waltzing with my darlin’ to the Tennessee Waltz, when an old friend I happened to see. I introduced him to my loved one and while they were waltzing, my friend stole my sweetheart from me.”  In those days, you could understand the words in a song and many sweethearts were lost.  Patty Page sang the song, published in 1950, and many others by her were enjoyed in the 50’s. “I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz.  Now I know just how much I have lost.”

I wouldn’t be waltzing that night, I thought.

JF